


The Moments We Had

by RosyPages



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Developing Relationship, Drug Addiction, Established Relationship, Falling In Love, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, Slow Burn, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-03 21:14:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17885318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosyPages/pseuds/RosyPages
Summary: A series of moments between Dave and Klaus as they fall in love during the war.





	1. Chapter 1

            Dave’s voice drifted through the tent so low Klaus wasn’t sure he’d heard it at first, “Can’t sleep?”

            He glanced over at Dave spread out in the cot beside him. They were so close Klaus could reach out and touch his bare chest. It was so hot most of the soldiers used their blankets as an extra pillow instead. His hair was an unruly mess of gold and his teeth flashed white through the gloom. How anyone could be quite so cheerful in the middle of a war was beyond him.

            He’d never met someone so genuinely _good_ before. Drug dealers and junkies weren’t known for their morality.  Klaus was used to being cast to the side and forgotten, or if he was being truthful with himself, yelled at for annoying everyone around him into insanity. But as soon as Klaus had stepped foot off the bus, Dave had been there to show him where to go and who to talk to. He hadn’t left Klaus’ side until he’d made sure (three times) that Klaus felt comfortable enough in camp alone, and even then, as soon as the dinner bell had sounded, Dave had been by his side again, guiding him to a friendly pack of soldiers who were all too happy to welcome Klaus into their ranks.

            Klaus just didn’t get it. He didn’t get why Dave was helping him. He didn’t get why he was in Vietnam. He didn’t understand time travel. He couldn’t wrap his brain around any of this.

            Sleep was a pipe dream.

            “Everyone has trouble sleeping on these things, at first,” Dave whispered, bringing Klaus back to the hard cot underneath him and Dave’s grinning face. “You’ll get used to it.”

            Klaus nodded, unsure what to say.

            There was silence, filled with the breathing of sleeping soldiers.

            Dave didn’t turn away and neither did Klaus. “So, err, where’re you from?” the man asked after a while.

            Klaus took a moment to consider it. Where was he from? 2019? A mad man’s mansion. The streets? “New York.”

            “Like _New York City_ , New York?”

            Klaus nodded into the darkness. Dave’s grin spread wider, if that was possible. Klaus could see twin dimples on either side of his cheeks.

            “Wow, that’s pretty impressive. I’m just from West Virginia. We don’t have much over there. Fields, I guess. That’s why my Mom told me I should join the army. She said I’d do better out here than stayin’ over there. Everyone was doin’ it anyway.”

            Klaus blinked in surprise. He couldn’t imagine someone as sweet as Dave willingly signing up to shoot people. “You _wanted_ to come here?”

            “Yeah. Protect your country and all that, right? Everyone’s gotta do their bit. I’m guessin’ you were drafted, right? ‘Cuz you got here so late. It’s weird, they told us we weren’t getting any new recruits for a while.”

            Klaus shrugged underneath his blankets. “Got lucky, I guess.”

            “Well, I’m glad you’re here anyway.”

            “Yeah?”

            “Yeah.”

 


	2. Coward

 

            Klaus was a coward. An absolute coward.

            Missions had scared him as a child. He’d liked to hang back and watch his siblings work. His siblings who could teleport or throw knives or change into monsters. He could talk to ghosts and somehow, he couldn’t picture a ghost coming in between him and a bullet. He liked to think that type of instinct had kept him alive during the insanity he called a childhood.

            Not being able to open a briefcase was over the top though. If any of his siblings had been there, the first thing they would have done was try to go back to the present. They would _not_ have followed a golden haired solider onto a bus. They would _not_ have followed the soldier into a camp and met his friends. They _definitely_ would _not_ have spent half the night talking in soft voices about the weather and home and books and anything else under the sun.

            It’s just… he really didn’t want to open that briefcase.

            And, okay, a very large part of it was that he had no idea where (when?) the hell he was going to end up if he did. 2019? 1831? 1427? 1692? Hell, he could end up some time after the apocalypse like Five had. No thank you to that. If he had to spend forty-five years with just himself as company, he’d go insane. More insane than Five at least. He did not trust the briefcase at all to take him back. There were dials along the side with numbers and symbols in gold lettering. He didn’t feel confident enough in himself himself to fiddle with them too much, lest the time machine disappeared without him.

            What would he be going back to, anyway? A family who hadn’t noticed his disappearance? The end of the world? Ghosts and dead brothers? Guilt squirmed in his stomach, but he was man enough to admit it. He was scared to go back.

            There was something else though. Something else that kept him from opening the briefcase and just going home.

            Dave. Dave, who had snuck him an extra ration that morning for breakfast just because he was worried Klaus was hungry. Dave, who made sure he wasn’t feeling too homesick or too lonely or even just too bored. Dave, who always made sure he was part of the conversations and the games even though he was a newbie no one particularly knew yet.

            Klaus was no stranger to having to hide crushes. You couldn’t just assume any guy wasn’t straight and letting on you had _those_ types of feelings in the wrong place could lead to a lot of trouble. Klaus had met people who used to brag about beating up people like him in the street. Hell, Klaus himself had been on the wrong side of some of those punches just for his makeup or the way he dressed. So, he was no stranger to keeping his feelings hidden.

            Dave could boast of no such skills. Klaus could see it in every smile he caught, in every touch of the shoulder, or brush of the arm. Every time Dave laughed at a joke a little too loudly or blushed a little too deeply. He had a crush on Klaus. It was a miracle the guy hadn’t been called out on it yet. It was the 1960s! Klaus didn’t know too much about LGBT history (thanks home-school) but he was pretty sure people weren’t too accepting yet.

            So, Dave had a crush on him. And Klaus… well, Klaus didn’t really know how to feel. He’d barely been able to wrap his head around the time travel. But he did know one thing. He couldn’t imagine causing the smile on Dave’s face to disappear when he came into their tent and found Klaus gone.

            He picked up the briefcase and slid it carefully under his bed. He’d always been a coward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, a pretty short one again.  
> They'll start to get longer soon but for now they're more set up.   
> I'm excited to get to some other chapters though.
> 
> Thank you for reading. Remember to comment!!


	3. Chapter 3

It turned out that no matter what time you were from, boys went crazy for cars. The squad (his squad, he had to remind himself) had received a new truck from the Big Bads in charge. Quite a few of the soldiers had gone head over heels for it, including Dave. Klaus’s morning had been filled with them raving about the new improvements and the paint job and whatever the hell else made the new truck so much better than their old one. It hadn’t taken long for the boys to start fighting over it and they’d only calmed down when Klaus had offered the idea of rock paper scissors to decide who drove it first.

Hey, if it worked for six teenage superheroes during life threatening missions then it worked for Vietnam. Klaus had only dragged himself over to watch because Dave had been making heart eyes at the thing since its arrival. He’d had lost at rock paper scissors though, which meant that Klaus had to put up with the grown man pouting until his turn came along. Although he grumbled about being last it hadn’t stop him from leaping into the driver’s seat like a puppy on the way to the park.

“Hey,” Dave called out from his seat after a few minutes of crawling around the thickets and trees, “You want a turn?”

            Klaus shook his head. “I can’t drive.”

            Dave, as was his custom, broke into a big grin. There wasn’t much that didn’t make him smile. He smiled when Klaus sat next to him. He smiled when Klaus looked at him. He smiled when every other soldier told him to wipe that look off his face because what the hell was he doing, grinning like a loon in the middle of a war zone?

            Dave’s smile made Klaus smile.

“I could teach you?”

And that was how Klaus had found himself in the front seat of an army truck with Dave at his side. The rest of their friends (Dave’s friends but Klaus was slowly learning names) had scattered around, watching with intense amusement and waiting for him to fuck up. They were supposed to be scouting the area, but Klaus had quickly learned that just because their superiors ordered them to go do something did not, under any circumstances, mean they were going to do it.

Life in Vietnam was complicated like that.

Sometimes their days were spent trudging through the jungle, waiting to get sniped by a lurking Vietnamese soldier in the trees. Those were the days when Klaus’s heart would be in his throat as he waited for his life to end there, decades away from where he was supposed to be. Those were the days he regretted not opening the briefcase again. But then Dave would clap him on the shoulder or send him a smile or just nudge him with his elbow.

And Klaus suddenly wouldn’t be able to remember why he was so afraid in the first place.

The rest of their days were spent just fucking around. Which Klaus was completely fine with.

“Okay,” Dave started, a man on a mission. His face was as serious as Klaus had ever seen it. “First, you want to start the car.”

Klaus tried his best to hide his snort. “It’s already running.”

“Oh, er, right.”

“Just… show me what you would do?” Klaus offered, adding a small smile. He’d never seen Dave nervous before and the effect was just… disarming. His forehead was all bunched up and he had to fight the urge to smooth the lines out with his thumb.

Dave seemed to hesitate, but then reached over and took Klaus’s hand in his, gently setting it on the gear stick. He didn’t remove his own and Klaus didn’t ask him to.

“I’ll just, err,” Dave murmured, eyes lingering where their hands were joined together, “Um, show you like this.” The cab compartment suddenly felt much smaller. Dave’s palm felt warm but even in the heat Klaus didn’t want to pull away.

“Okay.”

When Dave moved, Klaus moved. When Dave touched his leg, Klaus pushed down on the accelerator. When he moved his hand, Klaus switched gears. They get the truck moving, at least, dragging its lumbering body over the grassy hills and around the brush dotted around their camp. By the end of it, Klaus had only stalled it twice. He’d also driven into a mud-puddle, but he refused to take all the responsibility for that. Dave’s lips had been too close to his ear and he hadn’t been able to focus on the instructions.

When they were done neither of them moved. Dave’s face was smudged red between the freckles.

“Thank you for teaching me,” he said finally when the silence stretched on for a bit too long.

“The others are probably wondering what we’re doing in here,” Dave said in a tone barely above a whisper. Klaus had to lean closer to hear him and he could feel the heat of breath on the tips of his ears. “They’ll want their truck back.”

It was Dave who moved first, slipping from the vehicle and slamming it behind him.

Klaus was left in the front seat, his heart beating out of his chest, and he knew he couldn’t blame it all on the near-death driving experience.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you for reading!
> 
> Please remember to comment.  
> And thank you for all the lovely responses so far.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> Please remember to comment.
> 
> Tumblr is @thesevenumbrellas


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